About

Aaron Denham is an anthropologist, author, educator, and researcher. His most noted projects explore the spirit child phenomenon and infanticide in Ghana and historical trauma in Indigenous communities.

Denham’s published in journals such as Social Science and Medicine, Current Anthropology, Transcultural Psychiatry, Ethos, Ghana Studies, and in various book chapters. Denham’s first book, Spirit Children: Illness, Poverty, and Infanticide in Northern Ghana, was published by the University of Wisconsin Press. He was a fellow of the American Psychoanalytic Association. Denham also won the 2016 Boyer Prize for Contributions to Psychoanalytic Anthropology.

Originally from Idaho, he has lived and worked throughout the U.S., Canada, Ghana, and Australia. Denham was an assistant professor of anthropology at Northern Arizona University and a senior lecturer in anthropology and the director of the Development Studies Program at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. He was also a part of the Global Health Program at University of California San Diego. He is currently a researcher for the XPRIZE Foundation and an honorary associate professor at Macquarie University.